EUROPP is running a series of articles on the European Parliament elections, which were held on 22-25 May. This page collates all of the material in the series. The first section on the page gives an overview of how the elections work, the Chart in the second section shows the number of seats each parliamentary group received in the elections, while the country tabs in the third section illustrate the number of seats each national party received. The final section contains a number of articles on the campaign at the European level.

How European Parliament Elections Work

Elections will be held in each of the 28 EU member states on 22-25 May to elect the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who will represent European citizens during the next parliamentary term: from July 2014 until the next European Parliament elections in 2019. The date of the election in each state varies, largely because different countries have traditions of voting on different days of the week. The elections are therefore spread out over four days.

Number of MEPs

The total number of MEPs has been reduced for the 2014 elections from 766 to 751. This reduction is to comply with a limit placed on the size of the Parliament by the Treaty of Lisbon.

Distribution of seats

Seats in the European Parliament are allocated to each state on the basis of population, with the largest states being assigned the most MEPs. For the 2014 elections, the distribution of seats is as follows:

Electoral systems

It is up to each state to choose how they elect their allocated MEPs, but there are some broad rules about the kind of systems which may be used. The system must be generally proportional (the overall percentage of votes must loosely match the percentage of seats given to each party) and electoral thresholds to determine which parties are eligible for a share of seats must not be set any higher than five per cent of the vote.

Most countries use a form of party list proportional representation, of which there are essentially two different types. Under the first system, termed a ‘closed list’ system, voters simply vote for a party of their choice. Seats are then distributed to parties based on the percentage of the vote they receive: for instance, if there are 10 seats available and five parties each gain 20 per cent of the vote, then all five parties will receive two seats each. Under a closed list system, the politicians who receive these seats are determined by a list of candidates which is put forward by each party in advance. If a party wins one seat then it will be given to the candidate at the top of the list, if they win two seats then the next seat will go to the second candidate on the list, and so on. Countries which use closed list systems include France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and the UK (excluding Northern Ireland).

The second form of party list proportional representation, in contrast, allows voters to vote not just for a party, but also to influence the order of the party lists by indicating a preference for individual candidates. In this system, sometimes called ‘preferential voting’ or a ‘semi-open list’, seats are distributed to parties based on the overall vote share they receive, but within party lists those candidates with the highest support are put to the top of the list (although there are variations in how this works in practice). Preferential voting is used in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands and Sweden, among others. Luxembourg essentially uses an ‘open list’ system as voters can ‘cross-vote’: i.e. they can vote for multiple candidates across different party lists.

In two states, Ireland and Malta, plus the region of Northern Ireland in the UK, a different system is used entirely: the Single Transferable Vote (STV). In this system, voters rank candidates in order of preference, typically by putting the number 1 next to their first choice, 2 next to their second choice and so on. The basic principle for allocating seats under this system is that candidates must reach a certain quota to be elected (e.g. if there is only one seat being contested in a constituency then the quota might be 50 per cent of the vote). If no candidate reaches this quota (or in the case of multiple seats within a constituency, not enough candidates to allocate all of the seats available) then candidates with the least votes are ‘eliminated’ and the voters who supported these candidates have their vote ‘transferred’ to their second preference. This continues until all of the seats have been allocated.

There are also variations in the types of constituency used in European elections. Five states – France, Ireland, Italy, Poland and the UK – separate their elections into different regions (e.g. there are 8 MEPs allocated to London, so the seats for London are distributed based on the percentage of the vote each party receives from London voters). Most countries, however, treat the entire country as a single constituency. The electoral system used in each country is shown below.

Note: Although Germany originally had a three per cent threshold, this was invalidated by the German Constitutional Court so no threshold was in place for the 2014 elections. The UK uses a closed list system except in Northern Ireland, which uses Single Transferable Vote. Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland are treated as single constituencies, but there are particular rules in which regions play a role in the distribution of seats (for instance in Belgium there is a single seat reserved for the country’s German speaking minority).

Although all MEPs are elected nationally and therefore usually represent a national political party, most MEPs sit within European political groups in the Parliament itself. These groups are generally associated with the European political party that each national party is a member of. For instance, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party is also a member of the European People’s Party. In the European Parliament CDU MEPs therefore sit in the corresponding European People’s Party political group. This adds an element of cohesion to voting within the Parliament as it would be exceptionally difficult to co-ordinate votes between a wide collection of political parties from across 28 states. There are seven main political groups in the current parliament (shown below) and an additional 32 MEPs who are not associated with any group.

The Group of the European People's Party

The political group of the European People’s Party (EPP) contains the majority of MEPs from centre-right and Christian democratic parties. It is currently the largest political group in the 2009-14 European Parliament with 274 MEPs. Some of the larger national political parties affiliated to the group are Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Germany; the largest mainstream centre-right party in France, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP); and Mariano Rajoy’s People’s Party in Spain. EPP website

In addition to electing MEPs in the Parliament, the 2014 elections will also play a large role in determining who will be the next President of the European Commission. The next Commission President will be determined by a vote in the European Parliament on the basis of a proposal made by the national governments of EU member states in the European Council. Although there is still some doubt over how this process will work in practice, it is anticipated that the President of the Commission will therefore come from one of the European political parties which secures success in the European Parliament elections. For the first time, European political parties have therefore put forward official candidates for the Commission President. The six candidates announced so far are shown below.

Alexis Tsipras - Party of the European Left

The Party of the European Left selected Alexis Tsipras as their candidate. Tsipras is the leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left (usually referred to as SYRIZA) in Greece, which became the second largest party and main opposition in the Greek parliament in the general elections held in 2012.

Latest update: average of EP polls from 2 – 14 May; RedC, Millward Brown, and Behaviour & Attitudes. Note: for ‘Independents/Others’ one of the predicted seats will go to a candidate in ALDE and the other is predicted to go to a non-aligned candidate. For information on the parties see: Fine Gael; Fianna Fáil; Sinn Féin; Labour Party; Green Party.